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Know your Rights

Social sciences students quizzed their peers on topics related to the Lebanese constitution, their rights as citizens and the history of citizenship, among others.

The event was a student poster exhibition on citizenship, run by students in the course POL230 Citizenship under the supervision of Social Sciences Lecturer Zeinab Mirza. It took place March 5 at the Adnan Kassar School of Business (AKSOB) lobby on the Beirut Campus.

“I divided the class into six different groups, covering the six main themes of the class, and each group came up with an idea for the exhibition. It is an awareness campaign with interactive games,” Mirza said of the activity, which was also attended by School of Arts and Sciences Dean Nashat Mansour.

At one stand, two student participants asked attendees about their favorite Lebanese president. “We want to know who were the best, why they were the best, and which one we should use as a model,” first-year student Serena Richani said. “We only chose the three most recent presidents, because the older ones are not known to this generation.”

One of the stands at the activity was a chalkboard on which attendees wrote which rights they wish to see implemented in Lebanon. “We allowed every student to write whatever they wanted. But I realized that a lot of them do not know what’s in the constitution, which contains many laws that, as Lebanese, we are not using,” said first-year student participant Nour Osseiran.

“A majority wanted women’s rights, as in a woman’s right to pass on her citizenship to her children, and to give her child her family name,” she continued. “A lot of people wanted freedom of speech, even though technically we have that in our constitution. But many feel they are suppressed. Others aspired for democracy. We have pseudo democracy. We have the appearance of democracy.”